All the World Afire
by Titania Le Fey
Summary: This fic is based on Mike McQuay's Escape from New York Book and his description of the link between fire, Snake's eye pain and an unnamed nightmare and the imagery at the end of Escape from LA.


_It was orange fire again. Burning, brilliant, seething, hot fire that consumed him, consumed the world. He could feel sweat trickling down his brow from that searing heat. The fire pulsed with his blood. It drove his pulse which commanded the throbbing pain burning behind the patch or maybe the pain was what induced everything. It couldn't be separated; the pain, the pulse and the dancing, burning, orange, hot flames. Plissken stared at them hypnotized by the swaying orange and rooted in place by the scalding pain that ran streamers through his head and down his spine. His legs still refused to move as the fire got closer, hotter._

_Snake could have easily imagined this was hell filled with torturous flames but something in his gut said he was still alive, still on Earth and not whatever lay beyond. The hellfire began curling around his feet. Plissken could just start to detect the smell of the rubber soles melting under the heat even if he couldn't feel the burning orange on his feet yet. Sweat was now pouring from his face under the sweltering heat. His hand moved instinctively to clear his sight even though he felt he hadn't commanded it to do so. His hand came away from his cleared vision and nothing had changed. The landscape still boiled with the orange, feverish flames._

_Plissken felt it rising deep in his gut, he wanted to run. He couldn't place the reason besides some irrational unknown that caused the hair on his neck to prickle. Cold chills shot through his body even under the intense orange conflagration that filled his vision. His nerves were stringing out like an addict with no money. He shook and the paranoia rose. "It was coming." What it was couldn't be determined but it was on the way, instinct screamed for Plissken to run. He tried but the pain in his bum eye began to pulse faster with his blood. The throb pounding so fast that it was becoming an intense pain, a dull orange burn like the fire licking at his boots, heating the metal plating on the front to a searing brand on his calf. Nothing caused him to move. Snake tried as the nausea in his gut blossomed to full blown fear. The type of fear that made most men scream or piss themselves. Snake on the other hand stood resolute, waiting patiently. Even here in this burning land of throbbing pain, blazing fire and pulsing fear he stood defiant to the end._

_His senses strained to take in anything beyond the flame's crackle and the orange brilliance but nothing could be sensed beyond them. Then it came like the rumble of a distant hummer careening toward him. It was a growl, a deep hateful noise. Plissken related to that sound, it poured from his eye every time he saw a blackbelly. Here though it was given voice, one so vicious that Plissken again shivered and the fear gauge threatened to overload at any moment. His face tightened, eyes locked in the direction the rumble started but it spread. Moving in on him in rings like the orange flaming blaze had just seconds before._

_Blackness stepped from the veil of searing orange and with it came the smell of death. Plissken gagged stumbling away his gut twisting under the stench. It stalked forward, four paws coercing more orange from the landscape. Snake backed away from it, fear gnawing at him and his eye pounding in unison with the paws. Snake fell back into a wall, hands instinctively seeking to brace him. The hands touched and agony shot fire through his body. The wall was hot like a kettle that had set on a fire all day. His hands recoiled before his mind ever told them to. Snake's good eye drifted over his shoulder to the wall and up its surface. The rock face disappeared out of his sight range. He was trapped and the thing still moved on him. His eye squinted to see it. The black coat singed to bare skin over the body, open burn wound oozed a substance the color and consistency of egg yolks. Snake's hand came to his mouth as he tried once more to thwart his stomach's intention to wretch. It stopped just a few paces before him and yawned. The great maw exposing huge fangs and belching that smell. Snake had smelled it before. It was the reek of a week old battlefield and the filth of the crazies who crawled from the New York sewers. He couldn't stand it, revulsion race up his spine as he felt his stomach twist and an involuntary gag. He kept his eye on the beast even as stink threatened to topple him from his feet._

_He scrutinized the beast and caught its eyes or at least the one that burned ragging like a hot coal of hate and the empty cavern where the other might have been. Snake's eye went wide hypnotized by the one-eyed gaze. He was intimate with that gaze. Snake had seen it before but his mind couldn't wrap around where. The creature growled causing Plissken's hair to stand once more. The eye seemed to be boring into his soul he could feel the fire of the stare mixing its fiery gaze with the brilliant, orange pain surging through his nerves from the space behind his patch. The feeling of intimacy returned and with it a slow recognition. Snake's eye threatened to tear open as it grew beyond the limits of surprise. Snake knew that gaze, knew that eye because it was his._

Snake bolted upright in bed, eye wide, searching like a trapped animal and the scream just fading from his mouth. He couldn't tell when it had started but his throat burned from creating that one sound of pure fear. He could feel the sweat prickling on his skin in the cool room as he buried his face in his hands. Panting he tried to regain control. His eye was on fire with all the burning orange intensity of the dream and threatened to send him back into unconsciousness. Taking a deep breath he contemplated the room. "It was only a dream." He thought in a vain attempt to strengthen his resolve. There was a nagging feeling deep inside driven by the pounding orange tendrils of fire streaming from his eye through every nerve of his body. Something deep inside told him that this dream would be reality, some time, some place the fire would come to consume him.


End file.
